Against redemption: The dilemma of memoir
Abstract
The pressure for commercially published memoirs to offer a tragedy-to-triumph redemptive arc is exacerbated when the memoir is about disability. I explore how I attempted to contest this narrative arc, using a thematic rather than chronological approach and adopting the personal essay form. I also unpack the role of metaphor in representing a disability such as autism and the complexities of writing from a socio-cultural (rather than symbolic or medical) paradigm of disability. I examine one of the key dilemmas of writing a relational memoir and the creative judgements that the author must make.
Citation
Robertson, Rachel. 2012. Against redemption: The dilemma of memoir. Axon: Creative Explorations. 1 (2): pp. 1-8.
Source Title
Axon: Creative Explorations
ISSN
Collection
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Robertson, Rachel (2013)This paper explores the representation of ambiguous loss in a recent Australian memoir, Learning how tobreathe by Linda Neil (2009). My reading of this memoir focuses on the way presence and absence aremanifested in the ...
-
Houen, Anne Christina (2008)This thesis celebrates the emancipatory potential of writing, which can be a tool for creating alternative worlds and, as Françoise Lionnet says, for ‘reappropriating the past so as to transform our understanding of ...
-
Robertson, Rachel (2012)In 2009 when Julie Myerson published her creative non-fiction book The Lost Child., Minette Marrin wrote in the Times: 'Her son was betrayed because she's a writer first and a mother second.’ This was clearly meant as a ...